


Soft Place to Land

by foxtrotblues



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Don't let the depressing tags fool you it's not that depressing, F/M, I don't know..., I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Minor Character Death, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-11-18 08:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11287416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxtrotblues/pseuds/foxtrotblues
Summary: Harvey's life is perfect. Ben's life is far from it. When a tragedy brings their lives together they find out sometimes there is second chances for happy endings even if you have to work for it.





	1. Prologue - Potential

**Author's Note:**

> “I think I’ll try and write a short story” *Boyfriend laughing in the background knowing one of my stories can be short stories.*  
> Yes another Harvey story, I'm sorry he's my muse. This was a idea I had for another story that I will probably never get to write just becuse it was just a huge chunk of unconnected plot. 
> 
> Written in the summer of 2017 while listening to the Waitress Soundtrack way to much.

In his free time between his model building and unbelievably slow days at the clinic Harvey was writing a book. He tried to set aside an hour before bed hoping he could wind down by writing and cure some of his insomnia. When you're a small town doctor, the only small town doctor the amount of stress kept him at night worrying about a million things.   
Sometimes he would write on backs of papers, lines that inspired him. Maru his part time assistant leaning over his shoulder trying to figure why he was so secretive shuffling notebook papers under medical forums. He didn’t tell anyone keeping this his little hobby to himself. It's not like anybody straight up teased him about his airplanes collection but he noticed the looks they gave when they talked about him. Even when a real writer moved in and Elliott published a book Harvey kept going even if his work was slow and crude. He didn’t know why he put so much effort into it never to show anybody but he still continued.  
Some nights when his insomnia kept him up worrying to the point his chest hurt he would sit and read his work scratching his head with the eraser of his pencil, wanted to throw it away in the trash, and give up like his dream of flying convinced it would never be anything more than a jumble of ideas on a page.  
When Claire moved into the farm west of town she started bringing him coffee. She brought gifts to everybody, having a habit of sneaking out information about everybody. She noticed he was scribbling in a notebook one day asked to read it, he had said no. Asking turned to begging and even though it annoyed Harvey most of the time he secretly admired her persistence. In a fit of frustration he thrust his notebook one afternoon just for her to leave him alone.  
The next day she was waiting for him when he opened the door in the morning hugging the notebook to her chest. "You have potential Harvey". He shook his head turning the lock and propping the door open with a thick book. "i'm not Elliott".  
She put a hand on his arm and he flinched, he was not used to physical contact. Looking at him smiling her fingers light on his elbow "No but everybody sees the same things in different ways". Something struck Harvey deep in his chest as she handed him the notebook back.  
Claire removed her hand reaching in her backpack "Try writing about you rather than trying to fill everything with medical jargon, it gets kind of boring and confusing."   
She pulled a paper from her bag "I mean I'm not a expert or anything but I wrote some notes, just parts I liked, parts I didn't like, stuff like that.   
The fact that she read it was one thing the fact that she cared enough about what he had to say… well he couldn’t quite put words how he felt there was something that stirred inside him and made him feel like what he thought mattered.  
In the evening he set a hour before bed and wrote, even if he could write one sentence he wrote, even if he read it over and it seemed horrible he wrote. At four Claire would show up two cups of coffee in her hands and read it and they would talk.  
He began to look forward to those moments and felt himself trying to write more and more just so he would have something to show her. She jokingly called herself his muse and she was right. He had long since stopped writing to fill time on slow days and wrote for her.  
In the beginning he wrote about his childhood dog, a small scruffy terrier that slept on his bed, getting locked out of his college dorm room and having to sleep in the hall. Then his writing started getting more personal writing about his first kiss on the playground under the big oak tree, the moment he decided he wanted to become a doctor when one of his kids had a allergy attack eating something he wasn’t allergic to and he was the only one quick on his feet grabbing their allergy pen. He wrote paragraphs expressing the frustration and grief he felt when his parents and sister died in a car accident a few months before he graduated undergrad.  
Claire began to open up herself revealing more than just somebody who got frustrated at working at Joja mart. She was adopted as a baby, her parents unable to have a child after her older brother was born, her adopted father passing away in a car accident when she was one. Her mother started entering her in beauty pageants and in her grief turned to obsession. Claire always felt like she had to be perfect, always poised and collected to the point where she ended up with an eating disorder as a teenager. At the same time her older brother got arrested for drugs and her mother's answer was to ship him away and forget about the problem.   
Harvey found himself seeking out her company at festivals sitting together talking about anything. When she paid Robin to add on to her house she had invited him for dinner almost every night after opening the refrigerator and finding his pre packaged food. Somehow between her reading his writing and dinners he fell head over heals in love.  
He wrote about the first time they confessed they liked each other, how scared he was, terrified on a balloon ride, but not from the height but the potential for rejection but scared when she confessed she liked him back.   
He wrote about the first date, the second date, the twentieth date. He wrote about the first time they had made love one afternoon on a rainy day in her farmhouse. Blushing as she read it she kept that sheet of paper for herself.   
When she had surprised him by announcing she was pregnant not soon after, he wrote about how terrified he was but elated that he was going to be a father. He even wrote about the hastily planned in three days wedding ignoring the townspeople smirks and elbow nudges when they told them about the baby.   
They had traded their talks over coffee to late night talks in there small bed, even smaller now with her huge stomach as she read his pages with a smile on her face holding his hand.   
Harvey never thought he could feel this kind of happiness in his life. She was his muse, the love of his life, the soon to be mother of his child, she was going to help him write the story about his life, she wasn't supposed to die.


	2. Chapter 2

One a long time ago Benjamin Thomas cared , Before the innocence of childhood faded away, before he hated his life almost every moment of the day. Now his feelings turned to apathy and consuming alcohol. He adjusted his tie looking at his watch, counting the seconds he would get off work. He hated his job, he hated this tie he had to wear for his job, he hated his shitty apartment that he went to his job to pay for, but most of all he hated his life. Long ago he carerd and wanted to do something about it but now any spark was gone. He thought about the bottle of liquor in his glove box when the sound of his phone broke him out of his thoughts of self pity. He hit ignore glancing at it only as an excuse to see how much time he had until his smoke break. Of course it was his sister, probably telling how amazing her perfect life was, how she married a doctor, had a successful farm and was starting a family. Not that he wanted any of that. He just didn't want to be in his thirties and have nothing to show for it. While everybody in there respectable cubicles around them had families and a decent house to go home to he just had a one room apartment with a mattress on the floor and a microwave on boxes that his landlord had not discovered. He was pretty sure it was a fire hazard.   
He stared at the computer screen trying to focus yet again on the spreadsheet. He felt tired, a tiredness that never seemed to go away no matter how much sleep he had or how much caffeine he had in him, Too many numbers, to many boxes. The flickering of the CRT mixed in with the noise of the people around him made him anxious. The phone vibrated again and he stuck it in his pocket as he held the box of cigarettes in his other pocket walking out to the patio to take his break. He was sure his boss would yell at him but he didn’t care at the moment. If he didn't yell about him for taking a break outside his allotted time it would be of him smelling like smoke, or his hair being too long, or his shirt not tucked in. He was not Joja material and would never be. His phone vibrated again and he cursed at how persistent his sister was. Knowing her she would keep calling him. He hit talk more violently than he should.   
“What the hell do you want now?”   
Somebody coughed on the other end and there was silence.  
“Are you going to talk or not?”  
A small voice came out of the speaker that wasn’t his sisters. ““is this Benji?” He cringed as he shifted his phone to the other ear. His sister insisted on calling Benji even though he hated it. It made feel patronized, like he was six.  
He felt behind him for the plastic chair and lit his cigarette with his free hand “yes this is Ben”.  
“Hello i know we never met but this is Harvey umm Harvey Tompkins I married your sister Claire”  
He remembered his sister calling him giddy inviting him to his wedding, telling him proudly that she found somebody in that hick town, they had visited their grandparents in summer. He hated it. There stuck on a farm that smelled like animal poop and stuck in the middle of nowhere when he could be spending his vacation with his friends. Claire on the other hand loved it sitting with the chickens, showing the sheep in the small town fair they had in the fall. Just another excuse for her to be in the center of attention.   
“Yeah I know she told me.”  
There was a weird noise on the other end “I’m sorry to finally talk to you on such circumstances but your sister passed away last night”  
He almost dropped the phone “are you fucking with me?”  
There was a sound of sobbing on the other end and Ben felt like he swallowed a rock.  
“I mean she was fine when I talked to her and she said she was getting married and I was going to be a uncle”  
“I know she was fine… I don’t know what happened she just didn't make it through childbirth...I mean the baby's fine just…” he trailed off and Ben wondered if he had hung up. There was a sound of blowing his nose. “The memorial service is tomorrow”. Ben closed his eyes leaning on the wall his boss sticking his head out the door of the break room pointing at his watch.  
“I don’t think I can make it.”  
The last thing he wanted was to go to the funeral.  
Harvey rattled off some things he half paid attention to getting names and phone numbers to cousins and her friends to call and share the news.  
Harvey hung up after saying he would call again later with more information Ben nodding even though Harvey couldn’t see him.   
His sister was dead and all he was thinking of was he never got to smoke his cigarette.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys Foxtrotblues here. I'm sorry for the time in between updates and how slow this story is going. When I started it I didn't know where I was going. I just knew a few things, I wanted it to be different and build a story on emotions and I wanted to get in touch with writing stories and building characters. Not a easy task for somebody like me. I have no idea how many times I looked in frustration at my google doc not knowing where to go, if I should continue, if anybody cared to read this. Then I would get a Kudos and feel "well maybe its not half bad". Thank you for reading, thank you for investing time in my little project, I'll try and keep the words flowing even if they will take awhile.


End file.
